Amazon announces 9,000 job cuts

Amazon, the internet sales giant, announced Monday that it will cut 9,000 jobs, its second round of job cuts so far this year.

Numerous big tech companies including Microsoft, Salesforce, Alphabet and Meta have cut jobs in recent months, after over-hiring after the coronavirus pandemic. Meta is the other company in the sector that has announced a second round of cuts.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company added a substantial number of jobs in recent years, but uncertainty about the economy has forced cost and job cuts.

The cuts will be concentrated in cloud services, ads and units of the live streaming platform Twitch.

Amazon said last month net operating profit could continue to decline in the current quarter, hurt by the financial impact of lower spending by consumers and cloud customers.

Sales of the lucrative cloud computing division fell in the fourth quarter.

Amazon has scaled back or shut down entire services like its virtual healthcare offerings for its employees. Shares of the company were trading 1.4% lower on the Nasdaq Technology Index of the New York Stock Exchange on Monday morning.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it would cut 10,000 jobs this year, after another massive cut at the end of 2022 that cut 11,000 jobs.

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